The Emotional Cities
My name is Edison Merts. I was born with a quad-polar disorder. I have been arrested eighteen times on different accounts of assault, armed robbery, possession of illegal weapons, possession of illegal drugs, rape, disturbing the peace, domestic abuse, etc. I had somehow escaped every single account of my arrests, except for the last one- first-degree murder. I was charged for twelve life-sentences, adding up my bail to $12,000,000. No one had felt pity for the quad-polar freak, and I was left in jail to rot. Eventually, I had been shut in a secluded cell. That cell was my sleeping grounds, my bathroom, and my dining area. It was one-hundred percent concrete, with no windows, and a iron door shut with three locks that the thief of the jail, a man experienced with the most complicated of locks, could not open. Sometimes I could faintly hear the arguing of other inmates below on the floors under me. My reactions were more than varied. There were barely any moments when I had made contact, eye contact, with any other human being. Despite the noises below me, I was alone. Sometimes the door would suddenly unlock and I would awaken to a room, clean from all excrement and disgust, with new clothes. Everyday, I could hear a shaft from my door open, and a bowl would just slide in. No spoon, no knife, no fork, nothing, only my dirty hands. I always enjoyed that time of day, or night, I couldn't really tell, because it was the time when I finally got to see light, my own hands, my own skin. I could see myself. I was always sad when it went away, and I cried the rest of the day, sadly stuffing my mouth with mush. I would then begin to punch the wall, and would receive no reaction, which only made me angrier, then I would go into fear, thinking about the consequences of my actions that I had just began to do- death sentences, beatings, karma, all of these things to be afraid of. It got so bad that, at a certain point, I was afraid the whole day, afraid the walls were going to collapse because of the noise of a police officer beating on a rebelling criminal. I was so stupid, which was when I would usually become depressed and cry again. Then there were times when I was fully happy. Times when I could deal with life, and with the darkness around me. I felt joy and happiness, but then I receded back into fear, wondering if I was too happy. What if I wasn't thinking enough about the problems around me? What if I was blissfully ignorant, and someone would beat me? I could never be one thing at a time, every single day. I had to jump back and forth between four different feelings, things that I didn't want. I would rather have no feelings, none at all. I had always thought that each of my emotions had these cities, battling against each other for control of my mind. Of course, this was a ludicrous idea, but it helped me calm down, for just an instant. And then I would fall asleep. Oh, man, I can't even explain the things that I would think about and remember when I would even begin to pass out. I could hear anger yelling at me to get up, with fear telling me to stay down, or the zombies will get me. I could hear happiness trying to coax me into staying up to have fun, with sadness just mumbling quietly about smashing my head against the wall so that I could finally end my sad and meaningless life. Happiness would then begin to argue with sadness, with anger calling fear a chicken. I would then force myself to wake up, to stop hearing them arguing and fighting. I could rarely get sleep. I had valued the days, or nights, when I could sleep for a minute, an hour, and most rarely, a whole day. I hated waking up, because I was back in pitch black darkness with nothing to think about, only to listen to arguing and fighting. Constant bickering and insulting, quivering, and yelling, then there was one day when I had dealt with enough of it. I could feel another emotion smashing through all of the others, placing imaginary and figurative duct tape around their faces. The emotion would stop fights, stop everything, would make everything quiet. Those were the days when I could sleep soundly, and swiftly. The emotion didn't have so much power, eventually all of the other emotions would 'wake up' as I would call it, and begin to fight again, and then the emotion would leave. I would always call the emotion 'lonely' or 'distant', but it didn't really stick. I didn't know what to call it. It was just my savior, that was all. It's color was gray, and not vibrant with a certain color like with happiness being green, and sadness being blue, and so on. I had certain moments when I would 'enter' one of the cities, and would begin to walk through it, talking to people, feeling their emotions. I remember when I had gone through happiness, called, happiness city, and it was always a party. There were people laughing and cheering, with, amazingly, my favorite bands playing on the concert stage all day. The people in that city were never tired, and always had something to be, well, happy about. It was like my own slice of heaven. I had begun to ponder something, however. What if they were having too much fun? The people in this city didn't seem to have any jobs, and I could sometimes see drunkards and harlots puking on the ground, with their peers laughing with, or at, them. I could actually see car crashes with people inside, presumably dead. There was even a point when I had seen people being raped. There were no cops, no control, only happy chaos. There was even a time when I had entered sadness town, not a city, but a town. It sure looked like a town, with no one around, only people moaning and groaning about, smashing their heads against walls. There was liquids, disgusting liquids, everywhere and I had felt sad too. When I had attempted to help people, they just pushed me away, and said that it was their burden to carry. They always seemed jealous of those who were happy, and actually struck them when a single person was, at the slightest, happy. I figured this out the hard way when I was slapped across the face by some random woman, who just walked up with a beer bottle in her hand, drinking her troubles away, puking on the concrete sidewalks. I was invited to some random, abandoned house, when people had actually begun to worship sadness, embellishing it but giving blood sacrifices by cutting their arms with razors. Whenever they left, they always covered their arms, ashamed of their actions. When I had asked them what happened, a small tear would form in their eyes, and they would sprint off. I could feel something pulling me out of the city, before I became sad myself, and I was neutral when I had awoken, like I had somehow kept an emotion quiet. It was really cold in the jailhouse one day, when I had entered fear town. This town, which actually looked like a city, now that I thought about it, had control, maybe too much control. The cops were constantly arresting others, yelling incoherent words about how they were planning to assault them. I had shivered once when I was tackled by a S.W.A.T. member, an actual, fearless, stone-cold S.W.A.T. member, and had a gun up to my head for terrorism. When I had been released from the jailhouse, with a very long debate for my release, I had locked eyes with a woman. She had instantly sprinted off, screaming about how I had caused sexual assault, and I was promptly chucked back into the slammer. I was actually led into the same room where I was in real life, the whole deal, no windows, no nothing. I was then pulled back out into real life, back into my home sweet home. It was just recently that I had experienced the actual Hell of Anger City. It wasn't even a city anymore, just a barren, destroyed, crumbling mess of a 'city' that was subject to a large quantity of atom bombs. It was like Hiroshima had repeated itself, twice, then five more times, then had gone over and over again. I could still hear things explode, and children, women, and men would scream as they were blown apart from nuclear explosions. I could hear gunfire, commanding officers, explosive cannons, grenades, rockets, every object in the American, at least, I think it was America, arsenal was being used in this one city. It's almost as if that the country was destroying itself, just because of the division and confusion between the two parties of politics, and the Presidents' failures and misgivings, causing impossible amounts of stress and anger, meaning terrible decisions would be made based on emotions. So many innocent lives unless if they weren't innocent? I couldn't continue my question before I was dragged out of sleep, and still hearing the stupid, repeating voices of the most dumbest of arguments about hair color and virginity. I could have sworn I heard anger, of all of the emotions, insult happiness's mother. I didn't even know that emotions could have mothers. I couldn't do anything about it. While entering the cities of my emotions at least gave me a look at what each of the emotions could cause, and would somehow delay their ramblings and arguments, but I couldn't do anything. There was no answer to the arguments, no compromise, no solution, nothing that could help me out of this. I was stuck with these four voices, overlapping each other, and I was powerless. I even tried talking to the emotions, but they didn't pay attention. I gave up. I was done. I was frustrated, alone, and no one wanted to deal with me. My daughter could probably care less about me as well. My girlfriend probably ditched our daughter as soon as she reached the age of eighteen, went back to her job in Iowa. I never really understood why my daughter just began to act strangely when I was charged with my crimes. I wonder how she is doing? I really do. I would have loved to have seen her grow up, find a nice job...Go to college. So much could happen in a month, right? I can already feel a stubble forming around my chin, if it is hair, I don't know. I've noticed that the cycle of visions are slowly becoming more and more broken. Some parts of the cities are discolored or faded in some way, and the citizens who walk into them change color, staring at me with white eyes and gray skin. Their mouths are glued shut, figuratively speaking, and they say nothing. They never leave the gray area, as soon as their whole body is covered in a discerning gray. The unaffected men and women don't seem to notice them, which is shocking, seeing as the sadness town's population usually smacks those who are not depressed. It's offsetting, really. I've even tried stepping into the gray, and I could feel everything, all my personality, my thoughts, forcefully being pulled out of my very soul. It was pure luck that I had fallen out of the discolored area. My foolish curiosity punished every skin cell and internal organ in and on my body with unbelievable pain. I could feel all of the things that give me my humanity forcefully piercing through my skin, speeding up my heart beat, with my veins popping out of my skin with the full metric ton of pressure caused by my body's twitches and convulsions. I could feel cramps around my legs, my hands, neck, and a splitting headache just for the icing on the cake. It took me a full twenty seconds for my diaphragm to adjust, accompanied with the quiet screaming of small amounts of air escaping from my mouth. A long and large gasp had finally ended the pain, with a few more breaths sucked into my lungs soon after. The voices in my head were becoming barren in my brain, specifically with their comments and insults. While it seemed unnoticeable at first, I could slowly feel all of the emotions becoming uninterested and bored of their bantering and arguing, and it was nerve-racking. I kept anticipating when the next command would screech inside of my head, but there was nothing, NOTHING! I had even tried to go back to the cities, to experience them once more, but I did not find anything in my blank and quiet mind. I had finally begun to hear my own thoughts, my own voice inside of my brain, but why, why? Why!? I had then slowly begun to lose my own thoughts, my imagination, my feelings, my sight, my soul! I couldn't remember my name, my height, my family, my life, my crimes, nothing! What is this relief? This feeling of dread and emotionless was slowly becoming the new norm, the new me! I was experiencing hallucinations, and my mind had suddenly become invaded by another foreign voice. This voice. This monotone and boring voice was grating on my mind. It was the worst thing I have ever heard! So boring, so gray, so unoriginal, so lifeless, and so wrong! Wrong! Why wouldn't it shut up, why wouldn't it understand my hatred for it, why? The same words, the same commands, the same color! The...the... I...I don't know anymore. I can't think. I...I don't know where I am... Who...Where am I? What is this city? This...gray...deserted city of gloom and doom? These smashed windows and damaged buildings surrounding me like some kind of mob. It was rare to even see another being, who only stared with a blank expression and white eyes. It was such a lack of color, a lack of life, but it was still here. I don't remember where I came from, but I slowly can feel my limbs becoming weak and worn. This feeling...No...This thought of exhaustion and unmotivated movements is evolving into an action. An action of collapsing to the ground, and falling on my side. My life had suddenly was boring. I believe that I was always like this, but I don't know. It was inevitable for my eyes to slowly slide down my eyeballs like shutters at a store of some kind, and a final sigh had escaped from my mouth. I didn't have a need to be here anymore. No purpose...No life...No emotion. I was the embodiment of the gray life that I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be...what the voice had told me to be. I slowly feel my health eroding away, with a dull pain slowly forming in my chest. I didn't care. I could have sworn I heard someone calling my name...whatever my name was, but...I....D....D....Did... Category:Mental Illness Category:Reality